


After

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Catharsis, Complicated Relationships, Crying, Desperation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 22:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19119280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: “Angel,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale’s fingers touched his hair properly, almost daring to card through it. “Angel, I need you to tell me, please, please, I can’t go on any longer not being sure.”“Sure of what?” Aziraphale asked, and his hands touched Crowley’s cheeks, cupping them, and Crowley gasped. He took in the breath too quickly, too hard, and it caught in his ragged throat, stung in his lungs, but he gasped anyway.“That you— That you want me. Tell me you want me.”





	After

Three days after it’s all gone down, Crowley walks beside Aziraphale in the woods outside Lower Tadfield. His hands are in his pockets, his gaze forward, and if he lets his lips part he can taste the variety on the air – the scent of fresh garlic is thick on the air, great big thatches of the stuff carpeting some of the clearings, but he can smell the birds, too, and squirrels.

The woods in Lower Tadfield are all red squirrels, none of those little grey bastards to be found. None of Adam Young’s books, growing up, had happened to have any.

“I think that went rather well,” Aziraphale said. He was walking with a few feet in between him and Crowley, his hands loosely clasped in front of his belly. It wasn’t a long walk out to the car, but it was twenty minutes or so, and Crowley sighed, feeling the breeze touch through his hair, feeling the sun land on his face where it dappled through the tree canopy.

They’d been in to check on Adam, see that he was alright. He was better than Warlock, Crowley couldn’t help thinking. He would have been a better kid, he thought, to have between them, to raise, but… if they had, perhaps it’d have been different. Worse. And it wasn’t about Adam, really. It was about… the drive. Just the two of them, going somewhere, checking they were both alright, knowing it could have been..

It could have been so much worse. Crowley couldn’t help the way it kept hitting him, now, the understanding that it could have all gone so wrong – he’d felt elated, after they’d pulled one over on Heaven and Hell, after their date… Well, no, not date, but their dinner at the Ritz, but in the past few nights his nightmares have been worse than ever, and little things make him think, make his heart race and his body panic, because they’ve not got the memo yet that it’s all over.

_What if he’d lost Aziraphale?_

_What if he’d gone to Alpha Centauri, and Earth had blown up, and Aziraphale too?_

_What if Aziraphale had really, **really** —?_

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked.

“Mm?”

“Are you cross with me?”

Crowley tilted his head, and he reached up to pull down his sunglasses, his gaze landing on Aziraphale’s face. They came to a stop, the soft crunch of leaves and dry dirt beneath their feet fading into silence, and Crowley examined Aziraphale, who wasn’t looking at him, but was instead focused on some spot in the middle distance.

“No, angel,” Crowley said.

“Because,” Aziraphale says falteringly, and Crowley watches his hands where they rest against the plush curve of his belly, his fingers anxiously shifting, twitching, tapping against one another, “I was— I was dashed upset with you, at the… at the end there. For threatening to go off, I mean. I don’t know what I would have… what I would have done.” Aziraphale’s voice was very quiet, his gaze fixated elsewhere, and Crowley felt his whole body _pang_.

He waited. He waited, desperately, full of want, full of _need_ , for Aziraphale to go on, to say, “because, because,” to _admit_ to it. Did he really—? After all that, after the apocalypse that wasn’t, after everything, could Crowley stutter through saying anything other than _best friend_? What was the point, when Aziraphale would never respond in kind?

Would this go on forever?

For six thousand years, he has inched closer and closer, in tiny increments, stepping back whenever Aziraphale told him to, scrambling away when Aziraphale told him he was too close. For six thousand years, he has folded up loving words into silence, imparting them in deeds instead: for six thousand years, he has watched, and loved, and _yearned_.

Would this go on forever?

The apocalypse had been and gone. They’d faced on the world, and then Heaven and Hell, to boot – and even now, there’s three feet between them, and Aziraphale won’t _look_ at him when he speaks. He’s been inside Aziraphale’s _body_ , in a way much more intimate than any human could dream of, and yet he can’t reach out and touch him—

Forever? Will it go on forever? This aching, desperate want?

What if he’s been deceiving himself all these years? What if Aziraphale never wanted him, never _liked_ him, except that he does, of course he does, of course he does, except that what if he doesn’t, because if he did, surely he would let Crowley get just a bit closer, surely, _surely_ —

There are times, inescapable, sudden, coming upon one like a thunderclap or a sudden shock, that come after a great catastrophe. One sets one’s emotions, for the most part, aside, as there are jobs to be done, work to be completed, but after…

The after, for Anthony J. Crowley, came now.

The hot sting came to his eyes, hot and wet and prickling to the surface in sudden tears; his stomach lurched and twisted; his throat felt thick and full to the brim with unreleased sobs; his shoulders trembled; his knees buckled.

And just like that, he was a serpent anew, no matter his legs and his arms and his shock of red hair: a creeping, crawling thing upon the Earth.

“Crowley!”

Crowley sobbed, his knees pressed hard against the slightly wet dirt beneath them, and when Aziraphale took a stumbling step toward him, his hands without his permission, hugging the back of Aziraphale’s legs. He’d never felt like this before. Not in the 14th century, after seeing all that torture, all that plague; not after 1860-something, when he and Aziraphale had broken away from one another for nearly a hundred years; not after the Fall. Not even then.

His body was hot and cold, racked by the sobs that seemed to claw out from his very core, and his hands grabbed and clutched at the soft, worn fabric of Aziraphale’s tawny trousers, his face buried in Aziraphale’s lap.

“Oh, oh,” the angel was saying, his hands fluttering about Crowley’s hair but not quite touching, and Crowley couldn’t _help_ it. He felt like he was drowning in the torrent of it all, hitting him all at once, and he sobbed until his throat was sore with it, until his cheeks were stained with wet streaks and his eyes stung from crying. “Oh, _Crowley_ , what—?”

Aziraphale’s fingers brushed the top of his hair, and Crowley heaved in a gasp, looking up at him, scrambling to shove his sunglasses off so he could look at Aziraphale properly. What must he look like, a demon fallen to his knees, clutching like this at an angel? Like a sinner, begging benediction? Or like a supplicant, begging mercy?

What was the difference, with Crowley and Aziraphale?

“Angel,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale’s fingers touched his hair properly, almost daring to card through it. “Angel, I need you to tell me, please, _please_ , I can’t go on any longer not being sure.”

“Sure of what?” Aziraphale asked, and his hands touched Crowley’s cheeks, cupping them, and Crowley _gasped_. He took in the breath too quickly, too hard, and it caught in his ragged throat, stung in his lungs, but he gasped anyway.

“That you— That you want me. Tell me you want me.”

“Want you?” Aziraphale repeated in a whisper so soft Crowley almost couldn’t hear it. He saw the freeze of Aziraphale’s features, the slight widening of his eyes, the part of his lips. “Crowley—”

“I want you,” Crowley said. “Just you. All I ever—” He hiccoughed, and Aziraphale’s thumb streaked through the tears that were drying on his cheeks. “All I ever wanted, angel. Was j’st you.”

Aziraphale was shaking his head. It was that little headshake that Crowley had seen again and again and again: in Eden, in Rome, in Venice, in Nairobi, in Kyoto, in Lima… Everywhere. Always the same little headshake, when Crowley had stepped too close, and Aziraphale wanted him to take his two steps back.

“Angel, _please_ —”

“Crowley, I can’t, I can’t— Oh, oh, _please_ don’t cry, Crowley, please, I can’t stand it!”

Aziraphale fell with him.

He was on his knees with Crowley in the dirt, no doubt scuffing his hundred-year-old trousers, but he didn’t even look, and his hands remained on Crowley’s cheeks, his fingers brushing the edge of his hairline. Bereft of Aziraphale’s legs to grasp at, Crowley touched his chest instead, touched his cheek, too, and his body _revelled_ in it, to be _touched_ , and to touch in return: he wished, he wished, he _wished_ —

“Please, don’t cry, dear boy,” Aziraphale whispered, gazing into his eyes with such desperation that Crowley felt like he’d _die_ , just _die_. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ , but you move so fast, I can’t, Crowley, I can’t—”

“I _don’t_ ,” Crowley said, his voice cracking, and he wondered if it sounded like he was begging, because he was, “I don’t, Aziraphale, I’ve gone as slowly as I know how—”

“I know,” Aziraphale said. “I know, I know.” His hands were trembling where he held Crowley, now, and Crowley pressed his thumb, his hand, to cup Aziraphale’s cheek, to _hold_ him. Aziraphale leaned closer, and Crowley’s heart stopped, thinking Aziraphale’s lips would brush against his, that the angel would kiss him, but instead, Aziraphale’s nose brushed against Crowley’s, his eyes closing. It was—

Crowley felt like falling to pieces.

Aziraphale’s nose was warm against his, broader than his own, and Aziraphale clutched at the back of his head, held him so tightly, and Crowley leaned against him, pressed their foreheads together, the hand on Aziraphale’s chest grasping tightly at his coat and _tightening_ in the fabric.

“Angel,” Crowley said, “I lo—”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and his voice was sharp, but not biting, not nasty: it had a desperate edge to it, and his voice very nearly cracked. “Don’t. Don’t. I can’t bear it, Crowley, _don’t_.”

Crowley leaned back, and he looked at Aziraphale, aware that his lips were quivering, aware that his whole body was shaking. He wanted to ask. He wanted to ask, to _beg_ of him, “How long, angel? How long until…?”

But Aziraphale wouldn’t know. He knew that. He knew it.

The guilt was unspeakable, needling into him, that he’d forced this much out of him, and yet even his relief was overrun with the torrent of other emotions, of pain and yearning and grief and need and hope, and hope, and _hope_.

Hand trembling, he clasped at Aziraphale’s where it touched his cheek, and pulled it away from his face. The expression of hurt on Aziraphale’s face only lasted until Crowley pressed his lips to Aziraphale’s palm, tasting the salt of his own tears on the skin.

“Oh,” Aziraphale whispered. “Oh, Crowley…”

“We should walk back to the car,” Crowley said, around the lump in his throat, like he’d swallowed a whole apple.

Aziraphale’s eyes flickered away from him, and then back. His lips parted, then pressed together again. “Just,” he said, and coughed, his fingers twitching. Crowley’s hand was still wrapped around his, his other grasping at his chest; Aziraphale’s other was still cupping Crowley’s cheek, his fingers touching Crowley’s hair. “Just a few moments longer.”

Crowley sighed, and buried his face against Aziraphale’s hands, pulling them both to touch his hair, to card through it like he’d always wished they would, when it was longer, when there was so much more for Aziraphale to play with. Aziraphale tugged him just a little closer, and Crowley nearly whimpered when his forehead touched against Aziraphale’s shoulder, leaning forward so he was almost in the angel’s lap, Aziraphale’s mouth against the top of his head now.

“Precious thing,” Aziraphale breathed, not loud enough, even, to call it a murmur. “The only precious thing I ever…”

He trailed off, the sentence unfinished, and Crowley closed his eyes and clutched at him for as long – and longer – than he dared.

\--

Maybe he was imagining it, after.

But the space between he and Aziraphale, the ever-present gap between them as they walked, where they sat in the Bentley, at the little Iranian restaurant they nipped into come the evening, it seemed just a little smaller.

Two steps forward, this time.

No steps back.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). You can send requests [on Tumblr](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask), too. Requests always open. Check out [Fuck Yeah, Gabriel! too](https://fuckyeahgabrielgoodomens.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Remember that [the Tadfield Advertiser](https://tadfield-advertiser.dreamwidth.org/517.html) and the [Good Omens Prompt Meme](https://onthedisc.dreamwidth.org/9084.html) are both up and running, and people should definitely go leave prompts and fills on both!!


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